enough to go by
by sweetwatersong
Summary: All he needs is smoke to hide the mirrors, a smoke to ease his mind. (Clint/Natasha)


**enough to go by**  
rating: pg-13  
characters: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff  
warnings: self harm (emotional and physical), underlying mental issues  
author's note: Title and lyrics from _Enough to Go By_ by Vienna Teng.

summary: All he needs is smoke to hide the mirrors, a smoke to ease his mind.

_enough to go by_

_I only want to shake you out of sleep_

Clint picks up the habit in the aftermath of New York, the rush of nicotine nothing compared to the steadiness of his hands as he pulls out the first cigarette, cups it against the fall wind and breathes life into it. There is something so simple about the minute flame, controllably, touchable, erasable; on, off, on again with the flick of a switch. Bright against the dimness in the alleys, bright and warm within his curved hands, steady hands, hands that shake no more.

She finds him leaning up against the corner of the apartment building, feeling relaxed for the first time in days – weeks, if he's honest, months if he can admit it, and really the lie of normalcy is the only thing he can cling to at the moment so no, he's not honest, not about that. He exhales a stream of smoke, watching her with the cigarette low against his side; watches, waits, for her reaction, for her expression.

The calm acceptance surprises him. Somewhere in the back of his beaten mind (if it is his mind anymore, there are still shadows in the corners that he doesn't have the strength to sweep out now), Clint had braced for resignation, for despair, for a soft sadness beneath her curling lashes. He had pictured her murmuring softly, sighing "Oh, Clint," as she set about gently stopping him – or giving up on him.

Although he has a rock in this storm, although he's found a place to stand and is almost whole, almost put back together, he'd expected her to release what was left of him back into the wind.

Her matter-of-fact appraisal and dismissal of the gray vapor escaping from between his lips is startling enough to make him blink. So he almost misses it, almost doesn't catch the flash of bright anger in her eyes that's gone before she steps up, takes the cigarette from his hanging hand and pulls a drag of her own.

The breath she lets out, even and sure, could almost be a challenge – but it isn't.

"Don't bring lit cigs back to the apartment, okay?" is all Natasha says before she holds it back out for him to take, expectant. Clint takes it because what else is there to say? What could he want to say, when she's giving him this breathing space, letting him choose just this one thing for himself?

Letting him have control over something, even if it's as small as a smoke.

He nods since she's waiting and, when she leaves with the merest hint of an arch in her eyebrow to head up the wrought iron stairs, takes another drag.

The lipstick on the butt catches on his lips, pulls just the slightest bit before it's gone.

x

Nothing changes in that week. Natasha never comments on the breaks he takes to stand outside and stare at the impossibly blue fall sky, shoulders hunched against the autumn wind that carries away the smoke. Fallen leaves skitter around his feet every so often and he ends up bringing one in, laughing as he asks her where in the world did these come from, in a city like New York? He lets himself believe the smoking helps, that it gives a haze to the far corners in his head where he still doesn't travel, doesn't look. There is ground beneath his feet, there is change in the air, and he's doing better than managing; he's living.

She never mentions the taste when he kisses her, in the mornings before she heads out into the city or the lazy afternoons when she comes home, planting groceries in tearing paper bags on the counter. When his calloused hands brush across her face she closes her eyes, smiles as a can of green beans rolls over the linoleum to bump against his foot. Lying against him on their worn brown couch, she reads novels rescued from used bookstores with her head against his chest, never shying away at the lingering smell on his clothes. And it's nice, it's comfortable, it's a surety he holds onto during the bad nights when the sun has set and the lights of the skyline outside aren't enough to keep him warm when he chooses to stay on the couch and she heads to the bed. And it is his choice, of course; she would never let it be anything else.

Clint never asks her why half of the pack he buys goes missing.

Then it's been five days and he's having a fantastic Friday, something in the air making it easy for him to walk down to Central Park mid-morning and bring back more leaves for her collection. ("I'm gathering them for you," he had told her as she laughed at him that first time, eyes dancing. "Just watch, one day I'll bring back a branch. Or a whole tree. Do you want a tree in the apartment, Tasha? Can we fit a tree in here?") She gets home from her appointment and he's made lunch, the closest thing to real Thai you can get in New York, but the food sits on the stove when that spark gleams in her eyes and suddenly he's not hungry for food at all.

When they're leaning against a wall, Natasha's rib cage rising and falling rapidly under his mouth as he works down it, his fingers slip under the waistline of her skirt. And suddenly her moan is a sharp inhalation, suddenly Clint goes still because something raw is under his fingertips, his callouses.

He's treated enough wounds to know what one feels like.

Every trace of arousal gone, he gets the pencil skirt unzipped and tugged down in seconds. He knows what he'll find when he peels her underwear away – the clear liquid across his fingers tells him that – but he can't help his own breath when he sees the perfectly round burns.

"Jesus, Natasha," he breathes, looking up the naked expanse of her body to meet her gaze. "What did you do?"

There's a flare in her eyes, a crazy light he had forgotten existed – had chosen to forget, so he could be the crazy one this time around – and she's looking back at him with something between mania and fury.

"Have I ever been the stable one in our relationship?" She asks him with lips that jerk up in laughter, unconcerned by the lines of circles, the marks marching across her pale skin. One for every cigarette he's smoked; half of the pack. "I'm not going to stop you. I'm not going to hurt you. But I can't lose you again."

Clint tries to think, tries to swallow as the supposed structure of his calm collapses in, crashes down. It's too much, it's too much to take in and understand and what the fuck is he supposed to say to that? Because what she isn't saying, what he knows like a truth in his bones (knows better than the echoing alleys of his own mind), is simple – _nothing I ever do to myself will hurt as much as losing you._

His hands are trembling, shaking like they've shaken since New York, and he can't keep them still until he presses them against her skin.

He can't find himself, hasn't been able to mend the pieces back together the way they should go – but she hasn't let go of him, she holds onto who he wants to be again, and maybe that's all he needs.

Natasha's hands settle on his shoulders, a Russian hymn rolling through her torso to vibrate in his ears, against his forehead, his nose, his lips. When she slides down to kneel in front of him, arms draped around his neck, he accepts her kiss with a mouth that tastes of ashes and a need that tastes like her.

x

They tape over the walls of their apartment until it looks like an autumn forest, all the brilliant yellow and red leaves that have piled up against their door, and he drifts off to sleep as the first snowflake falls in New York City, one hand under her waist and the other over her scars.

_and bring you out under this flooded sky at any price_

_fin_


End file.
